The most prevalent smartcards on the market most often include a access system via contacts, which poses certain problems as to reliability and excludes any possibility of communication from a distance. In order to overcome this problem, certain manufacturers propose incorporating a passive RF system into the card, which allows both the card""s integrated circuit to be supplied with power and communication with the circuit to be assured. This type of card includes one or more pick up coils connected to the integrated circuit and placed in the thickness of the card. These coils can be of the conventional coiled wire type, but may also be etched onto the surface of the printed circuit acting as interconnection support or etched directly on the surface of the integrated circuit. These solutions are interesting, but currently come up against restrictions as to their use which limit the field of application thereof. Indeed, in order to be polyvalent, this type of card should be able to answer equally well the requirements of conventional bank cards and the requirements of xe2x80x9chands freexe2x80x9d access cards. This polyvalence is desirable not only for the card itself, but also for the associated RF transmission means which allow reading from, and even writing to the card. In the case of bank cards, the RF transmission occurs at a short distance, but the read-write means must be simple and compact so as to be able to be incorporated in portable, light apparatus, such as are increasingly used in commerce and restaurants. In the case of xe2x80x9chands freexe2x80x9d cards, more voluminous and sophisticated RF transmission means can be used, but significant reading distances of up to a meter are sought.
In both cases, it is important to have the best magnetic coupling possible between the card, and particularly the pick up coil or coils, and the RF transmission means allowing reading from and writing to the card. The present invention proposes precisely a particular card/RF transmission means combination allowing this magnetic coupling to be significantly improved, in all the aforementioned applications. The invention concerns a smartcard associated with RF transmission means for communicating with said smartcard and supplying it with power as required, this smartcard including at least one pick up coil connected to an integrated memory circuit, characterised in that said RF transmission means are arranged so as to generate lines of flux parallel to the surface of said smartcard, the latter including on its two faces zones of high magnetic permeability arranged so as to pick up these lines of flux across a first face, and to transfer them to a second face at the location in which the pick up coil(s) are situated. The smartcard can also have multiple applications, it may for example be an electronic memory tag.